The Creeping (2 page)

“It'll be all séance BS and horndog jocks telling scary stories so they can get close and dry-hump you,” Michaela adds, wringing the water from her hair. It sounds morally bankrupt, and maybe it is, but every year for as long as I can remember, the upperclassmen at
Wildwood High have called today the Day of Bones. At about this time eleven years ago, I was wandering back into Jeanie's front yard, where her hysterical mother was screaming our names. At least our predecessors didn't immediately deem the anniversary of this tragedy the highlight of their social calendars. Day of Bones started out with a bunch of drunk seniors searching for Jeanie's bones in a demented scavenger hunt—they actually thought they were helping the investigation. I suppose they would have if they'd ever found anything. But I guess it was too much work and not enough drinking. Next it morphed into a memorial and now it's just a twisted excuse for a keg and ghost stories. A very different kind of “boning” on everyone's mind. Every year Wildwood students go to Blackdog Lake for a bonfire. Whatever the debauchery, I am basically the guest of honor.

“One more question, please, S,” Cole begs. She didn't ask if the nickname was okay the first time Zoey brought her to lunch with us. But there was a hopeful quality to the breathy way she said it, and I kind of like it. It's new, like her. I smile and nod. “So um . . . I don't know how to say this, but nothing weird happened to you? Like . . .” The apples of her cheeks burn crimson. I know exactly what she's getting at.

“No, I wasn't molested or anything. The doctors and shrinks said I was totally fine in that department.” And it's the truth. There wasn't one caramel-colored hair hurt on my head, although Zoey is right about it being braided. As far as anyone could tell, that's all that happened to me.

Michaela kneels at the foot of my towel and digs through her tote. “I'm
staaaarving. Are we doing dinner? My mom is sooo not going to let me take her car after last time.”

Her gaze cuts pointedly to Zoey, who rolls her eyes. “Last time” was last weekend, when Zoey thought it was hysterical to tie her push-up bra to the antenna of Michaela's mom's sedan before we drove around downtown. It was pretty epic—C cups like a banner in the wind announcing our arrival—right up until we passed the fire chief, who lives next door to Michaela and recognized her mother's car. Michaela's parents aren't as hands-off as the rest of ours. They're ancient and already have grandkids from Michaela's older sisters. They're retired and constantly breathing down her neck.

Michaela stops rifling through her bag. She braces her hands on her knees and waits for an apology overdue by six days. Zoey makes a point to color code the gummies at the heart of her palm just so it's obvious how much she isn't sorry. “I'll drive,” I offer. I don't want the standoff to continue. Most of why Zoey and Michaela work is that they're polar opposites, but occasionally opposites combust. More accurately: Zoey combusts. “I have to eat dinner with the parent, so be at my house by eight,” I add.

“But you're never gonna make it with Taylor if you're all stiff and sober,” Zoey whines. Cole devolves into giggles as Zoey emphasizes “stiff.”

“Maybe we should have him pick us up from Stella's and we can watch him ogle her snowballs?” Zoey says, pressing her boobs—or snowballs as she calls them—together. She peeks up at me through thick lashes and bats them flirtatiously. Cole makes kissing noises.

“Not gonna happen,” I shout above their sound effects. Turning
tonight into a flirt fest seems disrespectful. And I can't blow my whole disinterested thing now by calling and bumming a ride.

Even Michaela, who I can usually count on as an antidote for Zoey's antics, has this giddy grin on her face. Michaela's sworn off boys until she finishes her early admission apps for college. In the meantime, she's taking living vicariously through us to heart. “I'll be DD with Stella's car,” she says slyly.

Cole cheers and Zoey flashes a conspirator's grin at Michaela before turning a pout on me. I take aim and lob a gummy bear at Zoey's cleavage. I lean back on my towel. I can feel Zoey staring, but I ignore her. I've been off all day. Ever since she arrived at my house this morning and I answered the door with dark bulges under my aching eyes. Thinking of today made it hard to sleep last night. I'd hash it out with Zoey—the only one I ever talk to about it, since she's the only one who lived all the aftermath with me—but lately she has zero tolerance for anything that isn't hooking up or going out.

My eyes close, and I let the warmth of the sun wash over me. The breeze rattles the oak leaves, making them chime like thousands of miniature bells. I inhale the air, fragrant with damp soil and pine needles. Everything is still wet and gleaming from springtime showers. Soon the trees will be brittle and dry, nothing more than kindling for campfires.

The others talk about Zoey's end-of-the-summer rager, the Fourth of July, and Michaela's trip back east for college visits. Zoey makes a bad joke about Michaela sizing up the student body at Brown. Cole jabbers on about hosting her first house party next week. I can almost see their vivid expectations for break, brightly colored and
shimmering like the fireworks they're looking forward to, against the backdrop of my eyelids. I let their voices melt away and concentrate on the beat of wings. Overhead a large bird, maybe a hawk or raven, circles. I feel its shadow slide over my torso as it flies above us. The faint babble of a stream slices through the rustle of the woods a few hundred feet from where we sit. It's full of skinny silver-scaled fish darting around, sparkling in the sun.

“. . . I said I'd totally go, but only if it was a group thing . . . .” I listen in to Zoey. Michaela responds with something agreeable, Cole giggles, and I tune out again.

The bird circles for another loop. The momentary lapse of the sun's warmth on my skin as the bird eclipses it sends shivers through me. I peek through my lashes and try to decipher the featureless silhouette in the sky. Long, straggly black feathers that twitch in the wind and a white hooked beak protruding from a head covered in what looks like orange melted wax.

“Ewww,” Michaela says. “A vulture means there's something rotting nearby.”

Zoey glares at the trespasser. “Nothing dead better stink up our cove.”

“Sooo gross,” Cole whines.

Michaela lets her sunglasses dip down the bridge of her nose and studies the feathered creature. “It's circling over us, though,” she says matter-of-factly. I shiver again. The bird hovers twenty or thirty feet above. There's a rustling in the brush behind us and the resounding snap of a branch. I whip around and stare into the gloom.

“Jumpy much?” Zoey teases, but her smile doesn't reach her eyes. She'd never admit it, but today always spooks her, too. I sense the bird continuing to loop overhead. The shadows are thick in the woods, and it's impossible to see more than a few feet deep. I keep my eyes trained on the spot where I heard the stick snap. It wasn't the light crackle of chipmunks scurrying over decaying leaves and acorns, but the heavy footstep of a person.

“Who is that?” Michaela whispers. I reluctantly turn from guarding against the woods. On the opposite shore, a hundred yards away, a figure stands between two tree trunks along the edge of the forest. His face is masked in shadows, but by his jeans and short-cropped hair, he's obviously a guy. “Is he spying on us?”

Zoey jumps to her feet and yells, “Hey, jerkwad. Stare much? Eff off or we'll call the cops.” Cole grabs for her hoodie and pulls it over her head. I wiggle on my jean shorts and stand with Zoey. Teeny-tiny Zoey, weighing in at not a feather over a hundred pounds, fists balled, ready to keep us all safe in her string bikini. Dread coils in my stomach. It's like I swallowed a viper. The stranger takes a step forward.

“What the . . . ?” Michaela mutters. He's maybe a couple of years older than us and he's vaguely familiar. The kind of familiar that suffocates you with déjà vu, like recalling a nightmare in gruesome flashes. He isn't looking at us. Instead his eyes are glued to the vulture circling above our heads. His lips move furiously, repeating something over and over, but the words are only mouthed, not meant to reach us.

I
force myself to unclench my fists. Michaela and Cole frantically pack their things at my feet. Someone shoves me a step forward, and my towel is snatched from the ground. The stranger stands frozen as a statue, a foot from the trees, eyes trained on the sky. Zoey's shouting. I'm not sure what. She's livid. This is our secret place. This is her safe place, where she thinks nothing bad could ever happen. I know better. I know bad things happen everywhere. The slope of his cheekbones, the squared jaw, the hooded eyes—they all add to the tension thrashing my stomach.

Zoey claws at my elbow. I tear myself away from staring at him to see that the girls have packed up our cove day, the provisions loaded in their arms. Cole and Michaela stand at the mouth of the woods, eager to escape. I snap out of my stupor and let Zoey drag me from the shore. I slip over the moss-covered rocks. Just as we're engulfed by trees, I turn to steal one last look over my shoulder. The stranger stares directly at me, angles his head as if he's studying me, and winks
before turning away to be swallowed by a copse of trees. A sly wink that makes me feel like an accomplice.
Like we're sharing a joke
.

“Who the hell was that?” Michaela shouts. She never swears, so I know she's shaken up.

Cole gushes, “I mean, it was sooo weird that he was there staring up at the sky like a zombie.” She's too excited to be frightened.

“And he didn't even respond to us,” Michaela adds.

Zoey and I keep close behind them. It's only a few degrees cooler under the shade of the canopy, but I'm freezing. Zoey is wearing her own backpack with my tote's leather strap slung across her chest, our beach towels bundled in one of her arms as she reaches her free hand out for mine. I seize it like I'd grab a life raft.

“Probably just some jerk-off tourist camping at one of the sites,” Zoey says. “He was just trying to freak us out. I should have gone after him with my Mace.” Picturing Zoey taking off after the stranger with her key-chain spray can of Mace loosens the knots in my stomach.

I open my mouth to say that he looked familiar, then shut it. Better not to eek Cole and Michaela out. I'll tell Zoey when we're alone. I'm sure it's nothing. If it had been any other day, I wouldn't have thought a thing about it. We would have laughed and flipped him off; maybe if we'd been buzzed on pink wine or beer, Zoey would have flashed him; Michaela would have called him “crack-atoa,” her signature insult. It's only that today is . . . well,
today
. Superstitious, I know. I'm not usually such a mental patient. It's like the more time that passes, the less of a grip I have.

It's totally my fault. I should have left well enough alone, but I got curious last year. The same detectives who were assigned my case eleven years ago come by every September. Detectives Shane and Berry go through the same routine with me. First we exchange hi-how-are-yous, because at this point they've watched me grow up. Then the same old questions: Have you remembered anything new? Seen any faces that look familiar? Dreamed about that day? Recovered any memories from the years before? The answer is always no. It doesn't even faze them anymore.

Sure they were hopeful the first few years, eagerly leaning forward, notepads at the ready; now they're resigned. Haunted, even—if I'm being all touchy-feely about it—with their dead stares. They don't bat an eyelash when I have nothing new for them. It's almost a relief that the whole thing can just be left so far behind us it's ancient history.

But last September I screwed up. I let curiosity get the better of me. I wanted to read the case file from that day. Burly and gray-haired Detective Berry had launched into a rant about moving on and talking candidly with my parents, but Shane, who was only a twenty-something newbie when Jeanie was taken, gave me an infinitesimal nod when Berry bent to stow his notepad in his briefcase.

Two days later, when I reached my car in the school parking lot, Detective Tim Shane was there waiting for me. His dress shirt was rumpled and hastily tucked into his jeans, mustard stains dappled his collar, and a badge hung loosely from his belt. In the sunlight the creases carving up his forehead and eyes had the look of thin and
crinkled pastry, like his skin was the buttery top layer of a croissant.

“Don't make me regret this, okay?” he said, slipping me a manila envelope. “And don't let your folks know I gave it to you.” I tried to squeeze out a thank-you, but my hand shook so badly taking the envelope that we both fell silent. “You have a right to know,” he muttered. I held on to that envelope, unopened, for five days. I don't know why it took me so long to muster the guts. I knew the cops didn't have a lot of evidence. There were only statements taken from me and Mrs. Talcott. No neighbors who shared the private drive were home that day, and no one reported seeing anything suspicious for days before or after. It was as though Jeanie had disintegrated. Or like she'd never existed in the first place.

I finally gathered the nerve on a Friday night when Dad was working late in Minneapolis. Mom left us when I was twelve, so I didn't have to worry about her. I told Zoey I was sick so I wouldn't be expected to make the rounds to weekend parties, and barricaded myself in my room.

At first I was crushed that there wasn't anything I didn't know about in the file. Every detail had been plastered on local and national newspaper front pages. I crumpled up the twenty pages, pissed that I'd been so stupid, until a yellow carbon copy slipped from the envelope. It was the transcript of my interview the day of Jeanie's disappearance. There in my cramped bedroom, wedged between my antique dresser and the wall, I read with mounting terror what I repeated 255 times during the course of my hour-long interview with Berry and Shane. It was Shane who kept count.